F_able Archive
Alongside the art walk, we conceptualised a fictional archive that illustrated the re-imagination of the under or unused spaces. During the workshops, we selected eight spaces and invented unrealisable, fantastical uses for them.
I was in charge of an old letting agency on Roman Road that we re-thought as a botanical garden and exhibition space called The Glass House which "opened" in 2028.
For more images of the different archives please see the F_abe Instagram
History of The Glass House
A team of young curators, the ABLE collective, decided to use the mysterious past of the space to produce something that would benefit the neighbourhood. They built a botanical garden and curated exhibitions within the space.
The conservatory's original goal was to serve as both a commentary on the attention given to city planning outside of historical centres and a way to embellish the neighbourhood through the propagation of green spaces.
Diary of a Glass House researcher, F_able Archive
Development of The Glass House
Over time, the curators recruited researchers who conducted experiments on the vegetation until the plant themselves observed rapid mutation and interdependence. The former letting agency transformed into a tropical rainforest, seeping from its green-glass enclosure onto the pavement beyond and slowly swallowing up the city.
Beyond its unprepossessing door, another world awaits. The sounds of life outside, sirens and shouts, fade away. Water drips, steaming up the glass. A parrot sings, flashing by in shades of yellow, green, and red. The warm air fills your lungs, a welcome respite from the chill outside. Familiar faces swim into view, round and content, lacking the customary worry and confusion that usually mask their features. Children play amongst the undergrowth, cocooned within the heady scents of hibiscus, orchids, passion flowers. Time does not exist within these glass walls, which provide a refuge from the city, a green haze of contentment, an antidote to exhausted emotion.
Event Poster, F_able Archive
Observational drawings and herbariums, F_able Archive
Notes on the fabulation/archive
The Glass House was meant to stop construction processes, force the reinvention of a shared, democratic, public space. If you were to walk in the Glass House, amongst the mutated, original plants created by a team of mad scientists, a fog would embalm the atmosphere, giving out a faint scent of wood, hibiscus and moss. The archive references the resilience of vegetation, their capacity to adapt to unfriendly environments, collaborate and mutate rapidly such as to survive. This idea was gathered around scientific fields that are at play in botanical discussions:
Phytosociology: How plants work as a community, their relationships.
Permaculture: Technique of planting, and caring which renders an ecosystem as independent as possible. It makes the maintenance circular. This means limiting water waste and reduce up-keeping, human intervention to the maximum.
If you were to eradicate all vegetation, it would re-build itself much faster than most forms of lives *
*animals (us too)